Smartling | AI-Powered Translation & Localization Platform

In today’s interconnected world, speaking your customer’s language is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity. Businesses aiming for a global footprint face the monumental task of delivering consistent, high-quality content across multiple languages and markets. This process, known as localization, can quickly become a chaotic mess of spreadsheets, endless email chains, and disconnected tools, leading to brand inconsistencies, slow time-to-market, and escalating costs. Enter Smartling, the industry-leading Translation Platform designed to eliminate this complexity. Smartling combines cutting-edge AI Translation with a powerful, centralized Translation Management System (TMS) and full-service language services, providing a single, end-to-end solution to manage your entire global content lifecycle. Whether you’re launching a multilingual website, a global marketing campaign, or a localized mobile app, Smartling provides the technology and expertise to help you connect with customers everywhere.

Unpacking Smartling’s Core Features: More Than Just Translation

Smartling is not just another translation tool; it’s a comprehensive ecosystem built to automate, manage, and optimize your entire localization workflow. Its feature set is designed to address the most pressing challenges in the industry, from translation quality and speed to cost control and seamless integration.

The Neural Machine Translation (NMT) Hub

At the heart of Smartling’s innovation is its Neural Machine Translation (NMT) Hub, a sophisticated AI Translation engine. Instead of locking you into a single provider, Smartling dynamically selects the best machine translation engine (like Google Translate, DeepL, Microsoft Translator, or Amazon Translate) for your specific content and language pair. It then enhances this output with its own proprietary AI, which is trained on your brand’s unique terminology and previously translated content. This results in machine translations that are not only fast but also remarkably accurate, context-aware, and on-brand. The platform provides a “Quality Confidence Score™,” giving you instant insight into the reliability of the AI-generated translation before a human ever touches it, allowing you to make smarter decisions about which content requires human review versus which can be published directly.

Centralized Translation Management System (TMS)

The core of the platform is a robust, cloud-based TMS that acts as your single source of truth for all localization projects. This centralized hub eliminates the need for scattered files and communication channels. Here, you can create and manage projects, define custom workflows, track progress in real-time with complete transparency, and manage linguistic assets like your Translation Memory (TM) and glossaries. The TM stores all your previously approved translations, automatically reusing them for new content to ensure consistency and dramatically reduce costs over time. Glossaries enforce the correct usage of brand names, technical terms, and industry jargon across all languages, safeguarding your brand’s voice and integrity in every market. This level of control and visibility transforms localization from a reactive, chaotic task into a streamlined, predictable business process.

Seamless Integrations and Unmatched Connectivity

A translation platform is only as powerful as its ability to fit into your existing tech stack. Smartling excels here, offering a vast library of pre-built connectors and a flexible API. These integrations automate the flow of content between Smartling and the systems you already use, eliminating manual copy-pasting and reducing the risk of human error. Whether your content lives in a CMS (Adobe Experience Manager, Contentful, HubSpot), a code repository (GitHub, Bitbucket), a marketing automation platform (Marketo, Eloqua), or a design tool (Figma, Sketch), Smartling can connect to it. This means content is automatically pulled for translation and the completed translations are pushed back, ready for publishing, with minimal effort from your team.

For developers, the API offers granular control. Here’s a conceptual example of how you might initiate a file upload via a cURL command:

# Example API call to upload a file for translation
curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer {your_api_token}" \
     -F "file=@/path/to/your/content.json" \
     -F "fileUri=unique_content_identifier" \
     -F "fileType=json" \
     "https://api.smartling.com/files-api/v2/projects/{your_project_id}/file"

This deep integration capability is fundamental to achieving true website localization automation and continuous deployment of global content.

Smartling Pricing: A Flexible Model for Every Stage of Growth

Smartling’s pricing is designed to be as flexible and scalable as its platform. Rather than a rigid, one-size-fits-all approach, they offer tailored plans that align with your specific needs and business goals. The pricing structure is generally composed of two main parts:

1. Platform Subscription: This is the fee for accessing the Smartling Translation Management System. There are typically two primary tiers:

   • Growth: Aimed at businesses that are scaling their localization efforts. This plan provides access to the core TMS features, essential integrations, and the AI-powered workflow automation needed to move beyond manual processes and build a solid foundation for global expansion.
   • Enterprise: Designed for large, global corporations with complex requirements. This tier includes everything in Growth, plus advanced features like highly customizable workflows, sophisticated security and compliance controls, dedicated customer success management, and access to the full suite of connectors and enterprise-level support.

2. Language Services: This component covers the cost of the actual translation. Smartling offers a full spectrum of services, allowing you to choose the best approach for your content and budget:

   • AI Translation: Leverage the Neural Machine Translation Hub for fast, cost-effective translations, ideal for high-volume, low-visibility content.
   • Machine Translation Post-Editing (MTPE): A human linguist reviews and refines the AI-generated translation, offering a balance of speed, cost, and quality.
   • Human Translation & Editing: For your most critical content, a professional translator and a separate editor ensure the highest level of accuracy, nuance, and cultural adaptation.

This hybrid model allows you to mix and match services. You can use pure AI Translation for user reviews, MTPE for knowledge base articles, and professional human translation for your homepage, all managed within the same platform. To get a precise quote, you’ll need to contact their sales team for a consultation, where they will assess your content volume, language needs, and integration requirements.

Smartling vs. The Competition: A Clear Advantage

When evaluating a translation platform, it’s helpful to compare it not only to competitors but also to traditional, manual methods. Smartling’s value proposition becomes crystal clear when viewed through this lens.

The key differentiator is that Smartling is a unified solution. While other platforms may offer a strong TMS, they often require you to source your own translators or lack the sophisticated AI Translation capabilities. Conversely, language service providers may offer quality human translation but lack the technology to automate and streamline the process. Smartling brings it all together: top-tier technology, AI innovation, and world-class language services, all accessible from a single, powerful platform. This integration is the key to unlocking unprecedented efficiency and quality in your localization strategy.

Getting Started: Your Path to Automated Localization

Embarking on your journey with Smartling is a straightforward process designed to deliver value quickly. Here’s a high-level overview of the typical user journey:

1. Connect Your Content: The first step is to centralize your source content. Using one of Smartling’s many connectors, you can link your CMS, code repository, or marketing platform directly to the translation platform. Content is automatically ingested as it’s created or updated, ready for translation.
2. Define Your Workflow: Next, you’ll configure a workflow that matches your content’s needs. A simple workflow might be: AI Translation -> Human Review. A more complex one for website localization could be: Content Ingestion -> AI Pre-translation -> Human Translation -> Internal Review -> Legal Review -> Push to Staging -> Final Publish. These workflows are fully customizable and automated.
3. Translate and Review: Once content enters a workflow, translators and reviewers are automatically notified. They work within Smartling’s CAT (Computer-Assisted Translation) tool, which provides them with the Translation Memory, glossary, and crucial visual context. They see exactly how their translations will appear on the final webpage or app screen, drastically improving quality and reducing revisions.
4. Deploy Globally: As soon as translations are approved, the integration works in reverse. Smartling automatically pushes the translated content back to its source system, ready to be published. This completes the cycle, enabling continuous localization that keeps pace with your content creation.

Conclusion: Your Partner for True Global Growth

In a competitive global market, simply translating your content isn’t enough. You need a strategic, scalable, and intelligent approach to localization. Smartling provides just that. By unifying advanced AI Translation, a powerful TMS, and comprehensive language services into a single translation platform, Smartling empowers businesses to move faster, maintain brand consistency, and deliver culturally relevant experiences to every customer. It transforms localization from a cost center into a powerful driver of global revenue. If you’re ready to stop managing files and start managing a global strategy, it’s time to explore what Smartling can do for you.

Request a Demo Today and See the Smartling Platform in Action